


untitled

by ghost_lingering



Category: Firefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-01
Updated: 2004-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 02:05:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghost_lingering/pseuds/ghost_lingering
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She tastes the word and it feels bitter sharp in her mouth.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	untitled

The core planets are worlds of bright white and perfect lines. _Home._ She tastes the word and it feels bitter sharp in her mouth. _Home._ She doesn't like hearing Simon's thoughts because they are bitter sharp tasting too. He thinks of needles and white doctor's suits. He dreams of saving people, hundreds of them, thousands, but instead he just saved her. At night he turns over in his sleep and runs his hands along his bare chest and shudders. She is not supposed to know; his thoughts only ever come unbidden in his sleep.

She tries to wrap her legs around Serenity. She didn't use to, but once she sat by the Captain too long and dead people starting walking across her tongue, tasting like brass buttons and human ash. They tasted like she thinks the Captain's home must feel. She liked their feet across her taste buds, and they were so good to swallow, and so silent. The Captain smiled; she saw Simon stiffen. The bodies kept marching, dressed in rags, marching, marching across her tongue, and sliding down her throat with her saliva. When she left the table, she had a wet heat between her thighs.

She bites into an apple. There are voices around her and if she looked up she knows that Wash would smile. He still thinks she is a child, and he doesn't care that she can read his mind, there is nothing there he is ashamed of. She likes Wash's mind. He is cork to Zoë's mahogany and she likes the feel of it between her head. Where Zoë knows home, Wash feels it, and River likes his way better, because his home is anywhere he can be himself and use his hands to fly. She spends a lot of time in him. He dreams of wings and birds in space and all those flying things—sometimes swift and always airborne. He likes to use his hands—to steer, to juggle, to smooth his palms over the Zoë's feet, her scalp, the space under her arms. He likes to make her laugh with his hands, likes to tickle, likes to tease. He likes her breasts, and rubbing them. He likes to slide his fingers below her abdomen, and into those other places and make her moan. He likes to touch her when she goes limp. River bites into an apple. If she looks up, Wash will smile and he won't care that she can read his mind, because he is not ashamed and he has nothing to hide. She doesn't look up and there is a worm eating her apple to its core.

She likes walking barefoot at night, when her ears feel quiet and her head hears images from dreams. Funny how some people dream. Jayne's dreams are simple, guns and women. Fierce kisses and hard bodies. But even that is a lie, because she can feel his tears in her stomach when he dreams of home. His mother hugs him and the arousal River has is one of emotion. She doesn't like visiting Jayne. His fantasies are one-dimensional and his sadness is smooth stone and wide.

She likes waiting just out side of Inara's shuttle when Kaylee is visiting and the Captain and Simon are trying to look the other way. Inara is at home nowhere and Kaylee in machines, but in the gold and red room that looks like the smell of incense and white ginger and tea they are at home with each other. River tastes the longing from the back of Simon's throat and smells the confusion in the Captain's eyes. Kaylee might be soft to Inara's touch and to Kaylee Inara might taste like the silk she wears, but River will never tell Simon or the Captain if it is true; Simon and the Captain who don't look at the shuttle and don't look at each other not looking and don't feel the scent of blood that clings to a doctor or a soldier. She listens to the soft voices coming from Inara's shuttle and tries not to listen to the noises in her head. If she hears their thoughts, she couldn't imagine the things that make her cheeks flush and her skin feel. She tries not to go into Kaylee's head, because she doesn't want to know if Kaylee would mind that there is a fake Kaylee living in River's own head.

When River wanders she feels Book's eyes on her and she knows they listen to her heartbeat. And when she tastes the Captain's empty dead called Serenity and sees his eyes weigh Inara and look away, Book is touching the back of her mind with his silence. And when River hears Simon's shaking breath at night in half sleep calling out "Kaylee, Mal, Kaylee...Mal" and reaches down between herself to do what Zoë loves her husband to do, she feels Book's ghost feet stand in her doorway. She closes her eyes and feels her muscles move—Book's mind is the only one that has never been her home.

Her hands know her body well, her skin holding the fluttering remnants of the subjects in her head. Her skin knows her touch well, her hands containing actions that may or may not be imagined. Her fingers slide and catch and it feels...it feels...it feels...it feels...but it doesn't feel like home.


End file.
